One Part Bleach, Nine Parts Water

I have to take my feeders down and clean them: Illness has struck. I saw a female House Sparrow with what looked like an eye infection in one of her eyes. I even have to take my suet feeder down because it has seeds mixed in and some of the HOSPs will hop over and eat some occasionally. Now as far as I know, HOSPs don't get House Finch Eye Disease (Mycoplasmal conjunctivitis), but it doesn't mean they don't get other diseases. Even if it was an injury and not an illness, it's probably better to disinfect the feeders as a precaution. I wasn't able to snap off a picture of the affected bird, unfortunately, to see if anyone could say what it was she had. Oh well.

Last Year and This Year

Is there a grace period on how far into the new year you can post your previous year-end review?

Guess what I got for Christmas? Around the end of November I decided I didn't want new binoculars as a gift because the little Nikon Travelite I had worked fine. I'm glad my parents didn't listen (or hear, who knows?) because my new Swarovski set works great. I was amazed at the difference and how I had to refamiliarize myself with old birding spots simply because I could see more of them. The difference in overall clarity--especially color--is amazing, it makes quite an impact on the frequent cold gray winter New England days. My grand-uncle, who is on the board of the Mass. Audubon Society, was able to steer my folks toward the SLC 8 x 30. Thanks Uncle John!

I also received another gift Christmas morning, regretfully before I received my binoculars: a lifer! A Yellow-bellied Sapsucker right outside my parents' window! That brought my Life Total to 124, my Year Total to 120, and my Mass Life and Year Totals to 105. You can bet after I opened my binocs I just looked out the window the rest of the day trying to see the YBSA. If I had been able to see a Hairy Woodpecker, I would have had a great Picid bingo, since I got a Downy, a Northern Flicker, and a Red-bellied throughout the rest of the day. The Hairy would've been the fourth of the common ones, and the YBSA would make a more uncommon five-picid bingo. Oh well, I still had a great Christmas.

The New Year also got off to a great start. The first bird of the year was a Song Sparrow, which was good because I just assumed it would be one of the billions of House Sparrows that come to our feeder. Rather than sleep in, I thought I would quickly go to a couple of nearby spots to start off my 2008 list. I ended up with 24 species on the day and was able to expand the species lists of a few of my favorite spots. All in all a wonderful holiday season.